House Committee Cancels Vote On Insider Trading Bill After Leadership Flips Out

The House Financial Services Committee canceled a scheduled
"mark-up" of a bill to ban congressional insider trading last
night, amid concerns that the committee's chairman, Spencer
Bachus, was moving forward with the bill to take the heat off his
personal political troubles.

Bachus' trading habits during the financial crisis were featured
in a '60 Minutes' profile last month as an example of potential
insider trading on the part of lawmakers. He's denied those
allegations, and seized upon the trading ban — called the STOCK
Act — to rebuild his image.

Bachus announced last night that he was postponing the vote
indefinitely to allow for further consideration of the bill.

It was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, acting on behalf of
committee chairmen, GOP leaders, and rank-and-file members of
both parties on the Financial Services Committee, who made Bachus
pirouette.

In a Wednesday meeting described by one source as "extremely
direct" and as "very blunt" by another, Cantor ripped into
Bachus, explaining that it was unacceptable for Bachus to mark up
the bill without running it by GOP leaders and other chairmen
with jurisdiction over its provisions.

Bachus, clearly anxious to create a good-government portfolio in
the wake of a "60 Minutes" piece that looked into the confluence
of his flurry of trades and access to information about the
financial collapse, put the bill, written by Democrats Louise
Slaughter and Tim Walz, on the fast track.

Cantor stopped it cold in its tracks, and he's getting praise
from some members of the committee.

"We're not going to cover Spencer's ass by passing a half-baked
bill," one
Republican member of the panel told Huddle. "Even Barney
Frank didn't pass it in his two terms as chairman and Dems are
the lead sponsors. It's all about Spencer's bad political
position, not the contents of the policy."